A soldier and a messenger

Maurice belongs to the class of soldier-saints, and the angel in this title is the second figure in a two-figure encounter. The angel is unnamed, which in Western convention means it is not one of the three archangels the tradition treats as individuals; it is a messenger of the lowest and busiest order, the rank whose entire office is contact with a human being. The title states only that the encounter takes place.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1635 and gives Bernardo Strozzi, an Italian painter, with the style term Baroque. It measures 82 x 101 cm and the measured colour family is ochre. The recorded location is the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Two ranks in one frame

Encounters of this kind put two hierarchies side by side, and they are not the same hierarchy. A saint's standing comes from a life and a death and is recognised by an attribute — armour, a palm, an instrument of martyrdom. An angel's standing comes from an order in a scheme that was fixed before any of the saints were born, and outside the three named archangels it comes with no attribute at all. A picture that pairs them has to make one legible by object and the other by function.